450mm Technology in Silicon, Glass, Ceramics

Grinding, Lapping and Polishing 450mm Wafers

Billions of dollars are being invested by semiconductor industry leaders such as Intel, TSMC and Samsung on research for 450mm technology and the implementation of fabs able to produce 450mm Silicon wafers. So called 18 inch wafers are actually 17.717”, 450mm diameter to be exact. 450mm technology also requires wafers of other materials including 450mm ceramics, 450mm glass dummy wafers and 450mm diameter chucks all of which can be provided and processed by Valley Design.

When the industry began converting from 200mm to 300mm fabs, the price per die was reduced by 30-40%. A wafer fabrication step, such as an etch step, or a lithography step can be performed on more chips per wafer as roughly the square of the increase in wafer diameter, while the cost of performing the step goes up more slowly than the square of the wafer diameter. Although moving from 300mm to 450mm fabrication poses significant challenges, similar productivity gains would expect to be realized.

Valley Design is in the midst of this development providing 450mm diameter ceramics, 450mm glass wafers, wafer backlapping, thinning, edge rounding, stress relieving, hole drilling and other machining services related to the manufacture of 450mm wafers and 450mm technology.